“There’s a God-shaped vacuum in everyone’s heart…”
is a quote that explains my former life. I lived that vacuum, feverishly trying
to fill it with people [usually men], entertainment, and any physical pleasure
you can name: food, drink, drugs, and sex. To be loved was my primary goal in
life. I wanted to be the most popular and the most loved girl in my world. If I
didn’t have a boyfriend at all times, I was on a quest to attract the next cute
guy.
My senior year in high school, my then-boyfriend
dropped me to date a sleazy sorority girl, leaving me heart-broken. I decided then
and there, it didn’t pay to be good. I gave up my good morals to get what I
wanted—love. My four years in college
were a whirlwind of changing boyfriends, and an escalating experience of sex,
drugs, and alcohol. I heard a quote once that said, “Men give love to get sex
and women give sex to get love.” That was me. My life was spiraling out of
control.
My then-boyfriend and I talked about getting
married. One day he laughingly told me that he expected to be married and divorced
six times. Six times? I wanted to be married once, and wanted that one to last.
This made me take a long, hard look at my love life.
While this drama was going on, I graduated from
college and was hired to teach high school English. The math teacher at the
high school turned out to be a ‘Bible-thumper’ who would try to talk to the other
teachers about their faith. I tried to avoid him, but he engaged me several
times in conversation, asking me questions like, “Are you a Christian?” and “Do
you know where you are going when you die?”
He drove me crazy, so I had to stop going into the Teachers’ Lounge.
All of this got me thinking about my life and my
faith. I had been raised Catholic, and believed in God, but I abandoned my
faith during high school. I wanted nothing to do with the church, or Jesus
Christ, or being good. When I was young,
I believed I was good enough to go to heaven.
By the age of 23, I knew I was bad enough to go to hell.
But God didn’t want me to go to hell. He used the math teacher to tell me about the love of Christ, by sharing the well-known Bible verse John 3:16: “For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son [Jesus], so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” I knew God loved people, but I never knew that He loved me personally. I didn’t realize that Jesus died on the cross for ME, to forgive all of MY sins.
Math teacher Les explained to me that I could ask Jesus for forgiveness and receive eternal life, just like one receives a gift: by accepting it. He explained that I could ask Jesus to come into my life, to make my life new. Since I was hating myself and what I had become, I decided to try it, and I asked Jesus to forgive my sins and come into my life. And it worked! Immediately I knew I was forgiven and that He came into my life. 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” One pastor said, “When the Holy Spirit comes into your life, you become not just a better version of your old self, you become a new person altogether.”
Jesus Christ immediately started changing me from the inside out. The things I wanted out of life, like peace, love and joy, came to me: not from external things like drugs, but from my new personal relationship with God. By God’s help, my marriage has LASTED over 30 years! I no longer crave the popularity, love, and acceptance that I used to so covet. Instead, this prayer now expresses my life’s goal: “God, your presence and your acceptance are all I need for everlasting joy.” I am thrilled to have discovered that the “God-shaped vacuum” I was experiencing in my life, could only be filled with Jesus Christ.
If you have questions, or would like to talk more about this, call or text me at 952-895-5921, email me at: knobhill13@aol.com, or friend me on facebook.
I’d love to talk more, Mary Knox
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